


Never Heard of Nobility

by sourgrapemountaindew



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 02:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5649673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sourgrapemountaindew/pseuds/sourgrapemountaindew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Courier left a massive impact on the Mojave. Despite that, however, very few people actually know what they were like. One journalist, Silas Chen, with curiosity on his mind and not a hell of a lot else to do, chases after leads across all of the Mojave to find out what the Courier was really like through a series of interviews with people who met her, knew her - and gets answers a hell of a lot different than the stories that have started to get passed around.</p>
<p>Work in progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Heard of Nobility

“Look, I’m not exactly the kind of person you should be asking about this. I didn’t really know her. Hell, I barely even talked to her. If you’re looking for someone with deeper info on that woman, you’ve got the wrong ranger.”

Silas fidgeted, not out of nervousness, but just out of habit. Had to keep his hands busy somehow. They reached into his coat pockets, where the left hand would roll around a smooth rock he found about five years ago, and the right would play with a single die he took as a souvenir from New Vegas 3 years ago, against his better judgment.

It was hard to say why he was taking on this project in the first place. The caps to be found in fresh literature were rather low, and he wasn’t entirely sure where he’d get all the means necessary to make fresh books even if he did make a story out of all of this.

If pressed on it, it was the lack of information that most drew him in, he’d say. This woman, fundamental to what happened at the Hoover Dam, the destabilization of the Legion, and so much more, and… there was hardly a goddamn thing he could find out about her out in the public lines of info. This stranger, this courier, comes and goes, changing everything but somehow simultaneously hardly leaving a mark.

There were stories about her, talking about what kind of person she was - is? - but they were coming from people like Ranger Ghost. They didn’t actually know who this woman was, but they had a lot of assumptions about her.

What she did, most of that was a matter of public record. What she was like, not so much.

He wanted the truth on that. It wasn’t much of a story, especially since she wasn’t anywhere to be found at the moment, but it was something to do in the meanwhile, and hey, a journalist has to keep busy.

And better to have the facts committed to history than a bunch of wild ideas.

“But you did talk to her. Right?” Silas pushed, fingers snapping around the objects inside his light coat.

Ghost sighed. “Yeah. I did. And like I said, I barely talked to her. I told her I was concerned about this big smoking fire that was coming out of Nipton, but nobody in the outpost could be spared to go check it out just yet. So I asked her to do me a favor.”

The Mojave air hung, stale and heavy, as Silas looked at her, and Ghost looked past him. Right through him. Her upper teeth slowly came into view, and started to dig into her lower lip, something quietly fierce going on behind those opaque sunglasses.

“Although…”

“Although?”

She grunted, then sat down at the beat up table at her post. “She comes back, and tells me the Legion came through. Killed just about everyone there. And not just killed, but…” Air pulled through her teeth, vicious little knives of oxygen. “Cruel shit, to put it lightly.”

“But that’s not the whole story.”

“No,” Ghost said, blunt as a brick. “It wasn’t. At first I’m shocked, couldn’t believe the Legion was this far west. I thank her for the work, and mutter something about how the NCR will need to find these guys… and she says, clear as a bell, bright as a bird, and without any hesitation ‘Oh, no need’.”

This threw a wrench in Silas’ own assumptions about where this story was going. “No need.”

“No need! Most casual thing in the world to her, no need. I ask her ‘What do you mean by no need?’ And she shoots back ‘I killed those guys’.”

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right. Then she mentions one of them was this guy in an animal hat, ‘Vulpes Something’, and I go ‘Vulpes Inculta?’. She snaps her fingers, nods along, just glad that I reminded her of the name on the tip of her tongue. Vulpes Inculta, one of Caesar’s big bads shows up in Nipton, and she just up and punches his head off. Didn’t even think twice about it. Didn’t even know who the hell he was!”

“Christ.”

“She was wearing a powerfist, too.”

Both of them went silent, Ghost now meeting his eyes just as much as he was trying to find hers behind those glasses. The implications about ‘punching his head off’ were a bit more clear.

“That’s not the kind of stories I’ve been hearing about her.”

Ghost finally brightened, hearing that, having a laugh that came with the kind of enjoyment found in knowing something that others didn’t know. “Oh yeah? What have you been hearing? That she’s some great kind of noble hero, cape twisting in the wind or some shit?”

“That’s… pretty much exactly it, actually,” Silas said with a nod, his left hand going still and his right playing more with the die.

“Well, like I said, I barely knew her, but even that little bit… that’s enough to tell me something else. If you’re looking for the real stories, though…”

“I’m going to have to find the people who traveled with her.”

“Exactly,” Ghost nodded before crossing her legs. “There’s two people I can think of that you’ll want to talk to, at least. One of them, I know for certain, is still alive. The first, I don’t know too much about. Former NCR sniper. Craig Boone. People spotted him hanging out with her all the way to New Vegas and then back again. Not sure where he is now, but somebody’s gotta know.”

“And the other?”

Ghost laughed, holding a joke that wasn’t a joke tightly to her chest, and had been just aching to let it out. “Raul Tejada.”

“...As in, ‘Tejada Soda’, Raul Tejada?”

“Big business ghoul on the block, none other. He’ll be a hell of a lot easier to find. Tell him the Mojave outpost could do with a 48 pack or so of Cactus Freeze, yeah?”

Silas nodded tightly, eyes already darting away, looking deep and far into the desert, his fingers feeling out the soft indentations of white plastic on red, again and again, turning it around.

A thought crossed him that his justifications for chasing this story still weren’t particularly great.

He’d have to settle for curiosity being enough.

“...Punched his head right off?”

“Right fucking off.”


End file.
